


(Why Can't I) Stop Where I Want To Stay

by atrata



Category: Men with Brooms
Genre: Alcoholism, Curling, Drug Use, Gen, c6d
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-09
Updated: 2009-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atrata/pseuds/atrata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set [mostly] pre-movie. Amy spends four summers looking for the curling rocks, and finds something else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Why Can't I) Stop Where I Want To Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tharaist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tharaist).



> Written for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/tharaist/profile)[**tharaist**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/tharaist/) for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/midsummer2009/profile)[**midsummer2009**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/midsummer2009/).

**first.**  
"Why is there a-- Dad?"

"Down here!"

Amy shut the front door behind her and made her way down to the basement, where her father had dumped the contents of a dozen or so boxes out on the floor and was sitting cross-legged, hunched over and rummaging through the detritus of their lives. Pale golden light streamed in through the windows over the curling shrine, illuminating the clouds of dust billowing around the room. There were stacks of old photographs; the sad remnants of elementary school art projects that she and Julie had brought home; newspaper and magazine clippings about curling; a bunch of Julie's Girl Guide paraphernalia; a pile of report cards and school pictures and those ribbons they give out to little kids for participating in athletic events; a bunch of ugly Christmas tree ornaments from the early 70s.

"Oh my god," Amy said, reaching out to turn on the lamp at the bottom of the stairs. "What are you doing?"

"Hmmm," her father said, frowning. "Maybe..." He up-ended yet another box, and Amy felt her stomach twist. Wedding stuff, in that box, and not just hers. A few pictures from Julie's engagement party floated over to the stairs and scattered at Amy's feet.

"Dad?"

"What? Oh, have a seat! I'm just taking a little trip down memory lane."

"Sounds like a great time," Amy muttered, sitting down on the bottom stair and looking away from the photos to survey the wreck of the basement. "Mum's going to kill you."

"Only if she finds out," he said with a grin. "What time is it? She and Brandon went grocery shopping, and I don't expect them back till seven."

"Dad, it's six-thirty."

"Oh, shit! Well, I'm sure it's here somewhere. You'll just have to distract her for me when she gets home." He winked and then turned in a half-circle to go digging through a different pile.

His rummaging sent another cloud of dust at Amy's face, and she waved a hand around, trying to dissipate it. "You're sure _what's_ here somewhere? What are you looking for?"

"Hm? Oh, a map of Trout Lake. I thought for sure it'd be in with Julie's Girl Guide stuff. Didn't she go on some kind of camping trip out there with the troupe?"

"I don't know, Dad, probably. Why don't you just go get a new one? Even if you do manage to find it, it's going to be almost twenty years old."

Her father paused and looked over his shoulder, his forehead creased in thought. "You think it's changed much in twenty years?"

"Yeah," Amy said, her eyes catching again on the photos at her feet. "Everything changes, Dad." She pulled over a newspaper clipping with her toe and covered the pictures. "Even the lake."

"I suppose you're right." He sighed and started shoving stuff back into the most recently emptied box. "Help me clean up?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Sure," she said, reaching for a box and shoving in the first few stacks of paper she could put her hands on. "If you tell me what this is really about. Why is there a boat in the driveway? Are we sailors now?"

Her father stopped packing and looked up, a huge smile on his face. "Nope, still curlers. You and me, Amy, we're going after the Copernicus stones!"

*

It took about five minutes for the entire town to know she and her father were going after the curling rocks, and about five days for Amy to collect all the rumors and start sifting through the data.

At the bar, Nug told her that he'd overheard the Wells boy bragging to his friends about skinny-dipping with his girlfriend, and the girlfriend said she'd seen a stone in the southwest corner of the lake, a little to the north of where the sandbar shows up when the water's low.

At the diner, Frances Darte -- who seemed to have taken up permanent residence at the counter -- said she'd overheard Emma Jarvis and Patty Doyle talking about the day the stones disappeared. They had a story about seeing someone canoeing straight down the middle of the lake at midnight, throwing stones overboard every 50 feet. Amy frowned into her coffee and decided that was bullshit; neither of the women lived anywhere near the lake, there was no way they'd been there at midnight, and eight curling rocks and a man in a canoe seemed more like a bad joke than like something that might have happened.

Frances' other rumor was more promising; there'd been an investigation about illegal dumping in the lake a few years back, and the OPP had come in to have a look around. They didn't find any toxic waste, but apparently they saw a curling rock not too far from the cliff face.

She got two leads from Old Man Kinsey, places where his fishing buddies got their lines caught on something too heavy to reel in. Kinsey sent her to Bob Mackenzie, who'd been leading the local scout troupes on trips to the lake for three years. Bob had a map ready and waiting for her; it was marked up by little curling rocks where his boys had reported seeing them. Amy stared at the map.

"There are twenty markers on this thing, Bob," she said.

"Well, Amy," he said, scratching at his beard. "The boys are eleven years old."

Even the school principal came by her office to tell her about the exploits of kids who'd heard the rumors and gone looking on their own. That mostly told her where the stones _weren't_, but it was a big lake, and Amy thanked her sincerely and signed up for a three-day diving class in BC.

***

Amy scanned the small crowd of people at the gate, looking for Brandon. Three days wasn't all that long, but unless she counted a handful of alcohol-induced blackouts -- which she didn't -- it was the longest the two of them had been apart. But he wasn't there, and neither was her mother. Amy's heart sped up as she swung her backpack off her shoulders and started digging for her cell phone.

"Amy!"

Surprised, she looked up and caught sight of Julie. Her sister was standing a little off to the side of the cluster of people, a slightly strained smile on her face and one arm half-raised in a tentative wave.

"Hey," she said, making her way over to Julie and catching her in a somewhat awkward hug. "I thought Mum and Brandon were coming to get me."

"Good to see you, too," Julie said, pulling away.

Amy rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders, trying to work out some of the tension of the flight. "Oh, that's not what I meant, and you know it. I didn't know you were home, and he's my kid. I thought he'd be here."

"He has a cold," Julie said, and then held up a hand. "Don't freak out, it's nothing major. Mum's feeding him chicken soup. Here, let me take that." She grabbed Amy's duffel bag.

"Thanks," Amy said. "Let's get out of here. I'm dying for a smoke."

As Julie drove, she stared straight ahead, her hands a perfect ten-and-two on the steering wheel. The radio was off and the windows were up and the night-time landscape was passing in a blur of shadows and sometimes shimmering headlights.

"So you're a scuba diver now," she said, after too much silence.

"And you're an astronaut," Amy said. Her voice sounded very loud. "What can I say? We're a family of explorers."

"Don't start."

Amy sighed and leaned her forehead against the window, the cool glass pressing against her forehead. "Don't start what? It's late. I'm tired. I miss my son. You surprised me. It's not a thing."

Julie's reflection was dim and distorted in the glass, but Amy could see her hands tighten, could see her lips twist into a sneer. "It _is_ a thing. It's always a thing with you."

"Oh, here we go," Amy muttered, and closed her eyes.

"Scuba diving? _Really_?"

Julie's voice had that what-the-fuck tone that always made Amy bristle, and she returned it in kind. "What, are we supposed to sit by the phone in case you call? What's your problem?"

"It's irresponsible. Dad's heart--"

"Irresponsible!" Amy threw back her head and laughed, but it was a choked-off bitter sound that hurt her throat, and she could see Julie wince. "I'll be diving, not Dad, and yeah, I did notice he has heart problems. I'm the one who's been here dealing with them while you've been off finding yourself or whatever the fuck you do in space."

"Oh, so I'm the irresponsible one? Is that what you're saying?"

"I didn't fucking say anything, Julie. I don't even know what the hell we're arguing about."

"That's bullshit, and you know it. I'm not the irresponsible one. I'm not the one who's an--" She stopped talking abruptly, and the rumbling of the tires over cracked asphalt was suddenly very loud.

Amy swiveled her head around to look directly at her sister, but Julie hadn't moved, was still staring straight ahead, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "Say it," Amy said.

"I'm sorry."

"Fuck off. Say it."

"Jesus," Julie muttered, unclenching her hands and visibly forcing herself to relax in the seat. "I'm sorry, all right? I... shit, I don't know. It's just that Dad looks worse every time I come home, and I worry about him."

"And I don't?"

"Of course you do. But come on, his plan is crazy." She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in her let's-not-argue tone of voice. "It's just a rumor that the stones are down there, and even if they are, how are you going to find them? And then what?"

Amy took a deep breath of her own and turned back toward the window, trying to decide if she wanted to accept Julie's peace offering. Apparently she waited too long. "Amy? Really, I'm sorry. I don't think you're irresponsible."

"Bullshit," Amy muttered. "If we're going to do this, you could at least be honest about it."

"Okay," Julie snapped. "Okay, you want honesty? You're jealous because--"

"I'm _jealous_?" Amy twisted in her seat to look at Julie. She could feel her mouth hanging open, but couldn't make her jaw muscles work to close it.

"Yeah, and you wanted to do this, so let me finish. You're _jealous_ because I left Long Bay and you got stuck. But it's not my fault you fucked up your life."

"No, and it's not _my_ fault no one likes you! That's why you left, and I'm supposed to be jealous you got left at the altar?"

Julie's body twitched and she sat forward in the seat, hanging onto the steering wheel like she was afraid it might get away. She didn't even glance at Amy, though, and Amy half-expected her to pull over so their shouting match would be more convenient. "No," Julie snapped. "But you were sure as hell jealous of who--"

"Don't you fucking dare."

"Christ, you got married to a loser you didn't care about because you wanted someone else. Much better than being left at the altar."

"Fuck you."

Julie groaned in frustration and banged the sides of her fists against the steering wheel. "Jesus, Amy. Do we have to do this every time I come home?"

Amy sighed and shoved her fingers through her hair. "I guess so." She slouched back into her seat and looked out the window. "Maybe we should go to couples counseling."

Julie snorted. "It'd probably make Mum and Dad happy." She paused, and then glanced over at Amy. "I really don't think you're irresponsible, you know. I think you're amazing."

Amy felt her lips curve into a wry grin. "I don't feel amazing. I feel like I want a beer."

"Sorry."

"Not your fault," Amy said, shrugging. "I always want a beer."

"Have a cigarette instead," Julie said, and cracked the windows in the truck. "And tell me what you guys are going to do with those curling rocks."

Amy reached for a smoke and laughed. "I have no idea."

***

After a month of looking for the stones, Amy was beginning to doubt they were even down there. She enjoyed diving, exploring the strange slow underwater world, but the lack of curling rocks was frustrating, and the only thing she'd found so far was a rusted-out shopping cart. It had depressed her for days. She couldn't really sigh into the respirator, but she squinted into the murky water, trailed her fingers one last time along the sandy bottom of the lake, and prepared to surface. As she adjusted, she realized her left ankle was snagged in some kind of weed, and she had to reach down and jerk it free. She saw a quick flash of silver before the weed came off her leg and out of the sand, sending clouds of silt into the water, and Amy reached down frantically to dig at the bottom of the lake where she'd seen the silver.

Her fingers closed around the handle of the first of the Copernicus stones, and she let go and made for the surface as fast as she could before the laugh bubbling in her chest could break free from her respirator and drown her.

Neither Amy nor her father could stop smiling as they hauled the stone out of the water and into the boat, where they both stared at it in stunned silence for a good five minutes.

"We used these the first year we won the Brier," her father said, and Amy's hand went still on the zipper of her wetsuit. She knew that much, but there was a faraway tone in his voice that made her sit up and think.

"Wait. They don't give the stones to the winners, do they? It'd cost a fortune."

"Nope," her father said, his fingers trailing lightly over the slimy surface of the stone. "We stole 'em."

"You did not."

The mischievous grin that spread over his face made him look twenty years younger. "Oh, yes, we did."

"But... what'd you do with them?" She didn't remember him coming home with them.

The grin faded a little. "Gordon took them home, but his wife was--"

Amy stopped him right there, before he started talking about the Cutters. "Shit, I can't believe they let you come back!"

"Well, they never found out it was us. And the stones only had another year or two left anyway. They weren't used again until--"

"Until the guys took the run at the Golden Broom, I know. You told me that part, but you never told me you stole them!" That part was the only part she wanted to know about.

"I'm telling you now. Nelson Aldridge's sister loaned us a van to drive up to Calgary that year, but the damn thing barely made it. The second we rolled into town, the whole engine block fell out. Of course, it was three in the morning, so there wasn't much we could do about it. We all slept in the van and then got a ride to the rink with some fans in the morning."

Amy grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler for herself, and tossed her father a towel. "Jesus, Dad."

He started cleaning off the stone with a wink. "I haven't even got to the good part."

"Oh, god."

Amy lost track of the story somewhere after Aldridge bribed a bartender to get a bunch of mechanics drunk enough to fix the van for free and Wally Walters broke into the rink. Her father, pretending to be more drunk than he actually was, threw a few draws and waited on the ice for the cops; when they showed up, Gordon -- stoned out of his mind -- stuffed himself in a locker to hide, and somehow they ended up with a working van and eight curling rocks with no one being the wiser.

When Amy managed to stop laughing, she said, "Wow, Dad. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"I knew they meant something to you, but I had no idea they were so--"

He waved a hand in the air, cutting her off. "Oh, no, it's not that. I don't need the rocks to remind me what idiots we were."

"Then what?"

He tossed the towel aside and patted the stone one last time. "They're not about the past, Amy. They're about the future."

***

"Hey, Amy!"

Amy looked up as she shut the door of her truck to see Eddie and Lily Strombeck crossing the medical center parking lot and waving. She was a few minutes late to work, but she waited the few seconds for them to catch up.

Eddie got right to the point. "So," he said, practically bouncing with excitement. "You found one of the rocks, eh?"

Amy nodded. "Yeah."

He shook his head a little and beamed at Lily, holding the door open for both of them. "See? I told you they could do it."

Lily rolled her eyes but smiled at him as she passed him and went inside. "I knew they could do it, too!" She looked at Amy. "Sorry, I knew you could do it. It just seems..."

"Weird," Eddie finished for her, stepping into the small waiting area.

"It's definitely weird," Amy said. "But... hey, did you know they stole those rocks?"

Eddie and Lily both stopped halfway to the registration desk, their mouths and eyes wide open in identical comic expressions. In unison, they said, "No way."

Amy laughed, and they laughed with her, the sound bouncing off the linoleum floors. Everyone in the waiting room stared, but "everyone" was just Mr. Davison and old Janice Arneson. Amy grinned at them and then turned back to the Strombecks.

"I don't believe he never told you guys, either. But I swear, they stole them." She glanced at the clock and swore under her breath. "Sorry, I have to go to work, but you two should come over for dinner sometime and get Dad to tell you the story. He'd love to see you."

***

The second rock came quickly on the heels of the first, their very next time out, an almost unbelievable relief after the solid month it had taken them to find the first one.

"Maybe the rest will be this easy," she said to her father, unhooking her tank while he wiped down the stone. "We'll be done by August."

"I doubt it," he said, but he sounded distracted. She looked up, and he was running two fingers over what looked like a chip in the stone.

She swore under her breath and went to sit down next to him. "Is it okay?" She knew the rocks might have been damaged by so much time in the lake, but the first one had been in such good condition that she'd forgotten to worry about the others.

"Hmm?" He looked up, a frown line between his eyes. "Oh, sure, it's fine. Been this way for years." Amy made an encouraging noise, waiting for him to say more. "I was just thinking about how it happened."

"Come on, Dad, you can't possibly remember everything that happened to all of these stones."

"Well, no, but I sure remember this one. It was one of the first practices with these stones, and Cutter threw a high--"

"Dad," she said, standing up so quickly she almost tripped over the cooler. "It doesn't matter." She hadn't signed on for stories about Cutter.

There were a few seconds of relative silence, just the water sloshing against the sides of the boat and some birds off in the distance as the sun sank on the horizon.

"Amy," her father said quietly.

"Sorry," she said, just as quietly. "You can tell me later, okay?" She turned and kissed his forehead. "Let's go home."

***

Amy was just sitting down to a cup of tea after putting Brandon to bed when her routine was interrupted by the crunch of tires in the driveway, followed by the sound of an engine cutting out. She frowned and checked the clock. It wasn't that late, but they didn't get a lot of unannounced visitors after eight these days. She pulled on a sweatshirt and let herself out the front door in time to see James Lennox climbing out of his car.

"Holy shit," she said.

He slammed the door shut and grinned around the joint in his mouth. "Hey, baby. Miss me?" He held his arms open and Amy rolled her eyes but jogged for him anyway. He met her halfway, picking her up and swinging her in a circle before putting her back down and kissing her cheek.

"You look like shit," she said. His eyes were wide and shot through with red, and his hair hung to his shoulders in dark, greasy hanks. "How long have you been in town?"

"About thirty seconds. The kid asleep?"

Amy nodded and Lennox turned on his heel and headed for his car. "Cool," he said. "Let's go."

_Shit_, she thought. She hadn't seen Lennox in a year, and the last time he came home, they went out drinking and she woke up three days later, by herself in a shitty motel room halfway to Winnipeg with a black hole where her memory was supposed to be. She'd called her mother to come get her and joined AA that week.

"Come on, Foley," he called over his shoulder. "This is vital shit."

"I... yeah, okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Let me grab my bag and tell my parents I'm going out."

*

Amy slid into the passenger seat and lit a cigarette as Lennox backed the car out of the driveway and onto the road. Her chest felt tight, her fingers unsteady on the lighter. "Where to?"

Lennox took a deep drag off his joint and held his breath as he stared at her, both eyebrows raised, his eyes darting to the road too rarely for Amy to be comfortable with his driving. He finally exhaled and turned his attention front. "I woke up a few days ago in-- in, uh, let's see, where the hell was I?" He gestured with the joint.

"In your car?"

"And I thought to myself, Jim, my friend, it has been way too long since you woke up with a pounding headache in the great outdoors with the smell of concentrated sulfur clogging your sinus passages."

"A couple six-packs and the mines?"

"And everyone says Julie's the smart one."

"I can't."

"Hey, don't be like that."

She shrugged and rolled the window down a little more, breathing in the summer evening air. "I have to work in the morning," she said, glancing at him to see how he'd take it. "I can't wake up next Tuesday in Thunder Bay."

"We'd need more than a six-pack to get you to Thunder Bay."

Amy forced a laugh. "Let's just smoke, eh? Have your six-packs with the guys tomorrow." That was safe enough; she knew he went out with the guys when he came home, but she never went with them. They used to invite her, but she'd always felt off, like something was missing, and they'd stopped asking after she turned them down a few years in a row.

Lennox glanced at her through the smoke in the car, his eyes narrowed in thought, but he just grinned around the joint. "No problem, baby. I'm easy."

*

"Just like old times," Lennox said, exhaling and passing her the joint. They were lying on a rock, their heads pillowed on his balled-up jacket and their feet pointed in opposite directions. She watched the smoke drift into the night-time sky and then inhaled, holding her breath until her lungs started to ache.

"Not really," she said. When they were stoned enough, sometimes she could pretend. She could listen to Lennox tell some story about horses and border guards and getting thrown down a bowling lane, and if she focused her hearing somewhere off in the distance, the rise and fall of his voice would morph into several voices. Then it might be like old times, the five of them out all night talking about philosphy and politics and psychic energy in the too-serious tones of the truly wasted.

But that level of stoned was still a ways away, and in the meantime, it was just her and Lennox and a bag of marijuana. He rolled over on his side, propping himself up on his elbow and staring down at her. He flicked his lighter to take another hit, closing his eyes as he sucked in his breath.

"Scuba diving," he said slowly, tendrils of smoke curling out of his mouth. "What's that like?"

Amy smiled and closed her eyes, thinking. She was starting to feel it, her head going fuzzy and the edges of her body starting to float away from her. "Loud," she finally said. "You think... you'd think it's going to be quiet, right?"

"Good for meditation." He sounded very far away.

"That's what I thought, but no. The bubbles are _really_ loud from the respirator thing. It's like... like being trapped in a tea kettle right before the water boils."

"I hope you're only talking about the auditory sensation," he said. "Here." He handed her the joint and lighter before flopping down on his back. "You know what you need?"

She tried to raise an eyebrow but didn't have the control for it; she ended up raising both of them. "This should be good," she muttered, remembering that he couldn't see her anyway.

"A story."

She nodded, felt her hair moving against his. "Dad's been telling me stories. There was a chip in one of the stones that he said was from the first practice, when Cutter wasn't used to the new handles, and--"

"Baby, Cutter never chipped any stones," he said, and Amy felt her eyes widen. "Broke a few, but never chipped any. Might've been the night Bucyk and Eddie were fucking around. Strombeck tripped over his broom and sent the rock sideways. Crashed into a zamboni, and don't ask why there was a zamboni on the sheet, because I don't fucking know."

Amy smiled to herself. It was easy to picture the scene, and Lennox's voice had deepened, slowed down.

"Anyway," he said. "That's not what I meant. There's only one story. No, wait." He paused to inhale, deep in thought. "Two stories." He wrenched his arm around to hold his hand in front of her face, blocking her entire field of vision, and counted them off. "A stranger comes to town, and a man goes on a journey. What's your story?"

Amy craned her neck, trying to see around his hand. "What the fuck are you talking about, Lennox? I'm not stoned enough for this."

"You gotta stop waiting for a stranger to come back from his journey, baby. Go on a journey of your own."

"Jesus christ," she snapped, sitting up. It wasn't cold, but she hugged her knees to her chest and rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. "Just because I'm not selling painkillers to tourists in Banff doesn't mean I'm not on a journey." She had to flick the lighter three times before it worked.

He sat up, too, and shook his head when Amy offered him the joint, instead rummaging through his coat for cigarette paper to roll another. "Maybe," he finally said. "But trying to find yourself on the bottom of Trout Lake isn't--"

"I'm not trying to find myself," she said. Her tongue felt dry and thick in her mouth, her words slow and heavy, unconvincing. "I'm trying to find curling rocks."

Lennox stared at her over the joint, his eyes huge and flickering with the flame of the lighter.

"Oh, fuck off," she said. "We're all looking for something."

"We're all looking for the same thing, baby, and he ain't on the bottom of that lake."

Amy grabbed the joint away from him and ignored his protests as she crushed it under her heel. "Not at the bottom of a bowl, either." She paused and stood up, her head swimming and her throat burning. "Come on. I need a drink."

 

**second.**  
"--make it past the hogline--"

_Click._

"--to retain hammer advantage--"

_Click._

"--high guard into the house--"

"Fuck," Amy muttered. She turned off the television in disgust and dropped the remote on the table, wincing at the loud clatter in the sudden silence.

"Amy?" Her mother shuffled into the kitchen in her ratty pink bathrobe, yawning. "What are you doing up, honey?"

Amy pulled one of the chairs around and propped up her feet. "I don't know. Couldn't sleep, thought I might watch some TV. Did I wake you up?"

"Oh, no, dear," her mum said. "Your father's snoring took care of that." She picked up the tea kettle to check for water, and then turned on the stove.

"Want to watch curling? It's Talk About The Brier time." Her mother's girlish laugh bounced around the kitchen, and Amy felt herself grin in response. "Never mind," Amy said. "Sit down, okay? I'll get the tea."

Amy didn't bother to turn on the lights as she went through the motions. She could do it in pitch black if she needed to, the process completely familiar, but there was a full moon hanging low in the sky, pouring silver light in through the window.

She and her mother sipped in silence for a few minutes, Amy's mind hung up on Brandon's schedule for the week.

"Your father tells me the lake's almost thawed," her mum said suddenly. Amy was startled enough that she put her mug down too hard on the table; tea sloshed over the sides.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath, wiping her hands on a towel. "Yeah, he tells me that, too."

One side of her mother's mouth curved into a slight smile. "He's excited."

"I can tell," Amy said, staring into her tea.

"And what about you, dear?"

"Me?" Amy looked up. "I-- I don't know, Mum." She shrugged. "I thought he'd get tired of it, but he said he needs something to do with his time when there's no curling. I guess Gordon's taken up 'gardening.'" Amy reached for the kettle, and poured more water into her mug. "What's Gordon think about this, anyway?"

"Oh, who knows what that man thinks about anything anymore," her mum said, rolling her eyes.

"What about you?" It had suddenly occurred to Amy that she'd never asked. "Do you want to come out with us sometime? I--"

"Good god and the beanstalk, no," her mother said, horrified. "This is between you and your father."

"I guess," Amy said, sighing. "But we only found two rocks last year, Mum. And it's fun, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life at the bottom of Trout Lake."

"Well, goodness, no one wants that!"

"What does he want, then?"

Her mother smiled and got up to put her mug in the sink. "Maybe you should ask him, dear."

***

After a long winter, Amy wasn't sure her motivation would hold up through weeks of fruitless searching, but luckily, she didn't have to find out. They found the next rock on their second trip out.

"How many things do you need for a ritual?" she asked her father, hauling the rock into the boat and handing it to him.

"Depends on the ritual, I'd imagine," he said.

"No, I mean, we talk about a lot of things out here, Dad, but we don't talk about curling or the stones until we find one. Is that a ritual? This is only our third one."

"Well," he said, wiping the grime off the rock and staring at it thoughtfully. "I think you're out of luck. I don't know anything about this one. This one's just a rock. One of the finest pieces of rock in the world, that's for sure, but just a curling rock."

"Oh," Amy said, disappointment settling in her stomach. "Well, what about the last rock we found? Do you remember something about a zamboni? Lennox said that Eddie and Neil were fucking around and threw a rock into a zamboni."

"Oh, sure," he said. He tossed the towel aside and dug in the cooler for a sandwich, taking one for himself and handing one to Amy. "Lennox, the delinquent bastard, stole it."

"Wait, he stole the zamboni? He said he didn't know how it got there."

"Of course he said that." He was laughing, but it sounded a little forced. "He was so stoned I doubt he could've remembered his own name."

"He's shitty with names," Amy pointed out, biting into her sandwich. Ham. "Okay. So why'd he get high and steal the zamboni?"

Her dad just chewed thoughtfully, leaning back against the stern. Amy pawed through the cooler for a ginger ale. "Dad?"

"He was trying to cheer Cutter up," he said, and the ham sandwich in her mouth suddenly tasted like spoiled meat, and it was all she could do not to spit it out.

Eventually, she managed to choke it down. "Fuck it," she said. She could do this. "Why?"

Another few seconds of silence, and then he said, "Well. He and Julie were fighting about the wedding. Chris wanted a proper curling wedding, on the sheet right after the finals, the whole town watching."

Amy groaned. "God, that sounds awful. Let me guess, Julie said no."

"Oh, worse than that." This time, his laugh didn't sound forced at all. "She said, 'What if you lose?' They didn't speak for days."

"Jesus," Amy muttered. She could imagine. "So Lennox got him stoned and stole a zamboni. Now it all makes sense."

Her father reached for a ginger ale of his own and raised it in a toast. "God help me, Amy, but I miss those assholes sometimes."

Amy raised her drink but didn't say anything. She missed them, too, but she missed them like she missed the bottle, and she took one more long dive in the water before they went home. It was getting dark, and they'd already found one stone that day, but maybe she could bury the shitty parts of the past in in the mud and the murk.

***

"Walk with me to the store?"

Amy frowned at her sister, home for a week before she had to be in Houston for something astronaut-related. "You can take the truck," she said, and looked around the kitchen for her purse.

"Oh, come on, Amy, it's four blocks. We need like five things. It's a nice day."

Amy looked up to see that Julie was giving her that narrow-eyed stare that meant she was trying to beam what she actually wanted directly into Amy's head. It had worked when they were kids, sort of, but it had gotten harder as they'd gotten older and more stubborn. "Okay," she said with a shrug. "Let me get dressed. Wouldn't want to scandalize anyone with my yummy sushi pajamas."

Outside, it was one of those perfect days that didn't come along very often, where the birds were singing and the flowers were blooming and the sky was so big and blue and clear that looking up made Amy dizzy. It was warm but not hot, a slight breeze was coming in from the west, and Amy said, "We should be on the lake."

"We?"

"Me and Dad."

"Of course, you and Dad."

Amy rolled her eyes. "You could come if you wanted. Maybe you should, you might stop freaking out about it."

"I'm not freaking out about it. I just want to know about the new medication. Mum said it makes him throw up, but he won't talk to me about it. Is he okay?"

"I don't know," Amy said, pulling her hair into a loose pony tail and kicking at a pebble on the sidewalk. "I think so. He's not good about when he takes it, and he doesn't drink enough water. But his appointment on Wednesday went well, so they think it's helping."

Julie nodded and didn't say anything as they waited for a few cars to pass so they could cross the street to the grocery store. As they started walking again, she said, "He does seem happier."

"We found another rock."

"Yeah, he told me."

"And?"

Amy wished Julie would get to the point, but Julie gave her an innocent look, eyebrows raised, and asked, "And what?"

"I can tell you're pissed off about something," Amy said. "Might as well get it off your chest."

"I'm not pissed off. I just don't get it. What's the point?"

Amy sighed and shoved her hands into her pockets, her feet dragging as they crossed the parking lot. "I ask myself that all the time."

Julie pocketed her own hands and slowed down, matching Amy's strides. "Figure anything out?"

"I think it's just... nice, you know? We go out and there's good weather and gorgeous scenery and he tells me all this stuff I never knew."

"Like what?"

"Like... Hang on, let's sit down." Amy didn't really want to tell these stories while walking through the grocery store, interrupting herself every few seconds figure out what kind of jelly they had left at home. So she plopped down on one of the yellow parking stops and waited for her sister to join her. Julie bent to brush the thing off before sitting on it, and Amy smiled, pulling her knees closer to her chest. "Well, one of the first stories was about meeting Mum. He was in the bar after a match and--"

"And he thought she was a waitress, yeah. She played along. You didn't know that?"

Amy looked over with a frown. "How would I know that? How the hell do you know that?"

Julie looked honestly baffled for a few seconds. "I don't know. It's something I picked up, I guess, paying attention." She shrugged, and the nonchalant gesture got under Amy's skin.

"What's that supposed to mean? That I wasn't paying attention?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Julie's head fell back and she stared at the sky for a few seconds before turning to look at Amy, her eyes sparking with frustration. "I didn't say that, but it's true. You weren't paying attention to anything except yourself, and where the next high was coming from."

Amy sucked in her breath. "That's a low fucking blow, Julie. Where do you get off--"

"Would you calm down?" Juile held up her hands. "What is with you? You're not like that now, but you used to be and you know it. Why are you so mad at me? It doesn't matter that I knew the story."

Amy opened her mouth to hit back, but realized she didn't know what the hell to say. She didn't know why it mattered; she just felt like it did. Like things were supposed to be fair, and they weren't. "I don't know," she said, deflating. "Sorry. It's stupid. He's just telling me all this shit and I don't even know if it's true and when you said you already knew..." She shrugged. "It just made me think, why am I even bothering?"

Julie started to nod, but then stopped. "Wait, what do you mean, you don't know if it's true? The story about Mum?"

"No, not that one." Her hair had started to fall out of its pony tail, and she reached back to fix it. "There was something about a zamboni, and he says Lennox stole it but Lennox doesn't remember, and then there was something about your wedding."

She felt, more than saw, Julie go completely still at her side. "My wedding?" Julie sounded slightly strangled. The wedding was off-limits by mutual, unspoken, agreement. Sometimes they went there anyway, but only when the gloves were off. This time, it was something else, and Amy felt like she was on thin ice.

"I... yeah." Amy carefully put her hands in her lap and, just as carefully, didn't look over. "He said you and Cutter had a big fight about when it was going to be. That he wanted it to be right after the final, and you said no."

Silence. Amy glanced over and expected to see Julie sitting there tense, with her jaw clenched and her fingernails digging into her knees, but instead Julie was staring at her, her mouth slack-jawed. "Are you serious?" She seemed stunned.

Amy looked around the parking lot, confused, like maybe there was something else happening that she hadn't noticed. "Um, yeah."

"Amy. I didn't have that fight with Chris. I had that fight with you."

"What?" Amy's chest tightened, her stomach lurching the way it did when she didn't want to go somewhere but a conversation was pulling her along anyway.

"You and the guys had gone out, and you came home and told me that's what he wanted, and I flipped out. We screamed at each other for hours. I was jealous that he'd told you what he wanted but hadn't said anything to me, and I was pissed off that he wanted something so stupid, and you said I didn't believe in him and didn't love him and didn't deserve him and I... shit, Amy. You don't remember that?" Her voice was gentle and maybe a little hurt, but Amy couldn't tell if the pain was new or old or somewhere in between.

Amy stared at a pebble on the ground, a few inches from her left shoe. "Sounds like us," she said, because it did. She could picture it, could practically hear it, but she couldn't remember it. "I was out with the guys, you said. How drunk was I?"

"Pretty fucking drunk. You broke Dad's special commemorative edition Brier plate." Her tone was light, like she was treading very carefully.

Amy looked over and frowned. "On purpose?"

"I don't think so. You were trying to make a point about the vast importance of curling, and dropped it."

"Great." Amy closed her eyes and lowered her head until she felt her cheekbones settle against her kneecaps. "Fuck," she muttered, feeling hollow, like she was all bones, too many holes where her memories were supposed to be.

"Hey, it was a long time ago. Don't worry about it." Julie's hand came to rest tentatively between her shoulder blades. "Come on. We don't need anything from the store. I made that up to get you out of the house." She squeezed Amy's shoulder, a little more firmly, and then Amy heard her stand up. She couldn't quite face going home, so she said the one thing that would keep Julie where she was.

"Dad's dying."

Julie sat back down.

"You asked about the point," Amy said, the words cutting at her throat and her eyes stinging behind her eyelids. "That's the point. The stones, the stories. He's sinking that shit in the lake before he dies."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

They walked home in silence.

***

"Hey, Dad," Amy said, handing him the fourth curling rock, which was dripping water and slime. "Sorry I broke your special commemorative edition Brier plate."

He set the rock down at his feet but didn't look at it. Instead, he was studying her, a slight frown on his face. "You didn't break that plate," he said. "Cutter did. He was maybe fifteen, showing it to Eddie, and dropped it."

"Oh," Amy said, because what the hell else was she supposed to say? It didn't matter.

An hour later, as they pulled the fifth stone out of the water -- it was exactly where Frances' tip from the OPP said it would be -- Amy realized she hadn't frozen at the sound of Cutter's name.

They found the sixth stone the next week, and it seemed like their second summer of searching might be their last, one strange stroke of luck after another. Word spread quickly through Long Bay, like it always did, and Amy could feel the town's excitement build with every stone they recovered. A bit of the life of Long Bay had left with Chris Cutter -- everyone still loved curling, but they didn't live for it like they used to. The sheets and seats of the arena stood empty most of the year without a hometown rink to rally behind, and Amy felt like the town thought they'd get their lives back when all the stones were found. But Amy knew better: When they had all the rocks, everyone could move the hell on.

Still, people stopped her in the street to talk about the search, they came by her office with more rumors about the last two stones, and the town felt alive in a way it hadn't in years, electricity zinging through the air.

***

"Hey," Amy said with a smile, holding the door open for Bucyk and his younger son. Andrew was a little younger than Brandon, and he was staring at her, wide-eyed, his red hair standing up in all directions. "Hi there," she said, smiling at him. "Come on in."

Inside, Bucyk turned to face her, a thin, tired smile on his face. "Thanks. I really appreciate this, Amy. Linda and Philip are both really sick and work is--"

"Don't worry about it," she said, closing the door behind them. "You guys can watch Brandon some weekend and we'll call it even."

His smile got a little wider and he nodded. "Sounds good."

"Is that Neil Bucyk I hear?" her father's voice called from the living room. "Get your skinny ass in here, son."

"Oh, boy," Bucyk muttered. He dropped into a crouch and put his hands on Andrew's shoulders. "Run in there and say hello to Mr. Foley."

Andrew nodded and took off, while Amy and Neil trailed behind, watching as Andrew climbed up into her father's lap. Her father, of course, immediately started talking about curling. Amy rolled her eyes and saw Bucyk do the same.

"I was about to make some tea," she said. "You want to stay for a few minutes?"

Bucyk scratched at the back of his neck. "I probably shouldn't," he said. "Linda'll be expecting me back."

Amy raised an eyebrow and waited.

He frowned off into the distance for a few seconds and then glanced up hopefully. "Got any beer?"

She laughed, not surprised he'd given in. "I don't know. Dad's not supposed to drink, with his heart, but I'm pretty sure he's got some stashed somewhere."

*

Amy was on her third cup of tea and Bucyk on his second beer when her father joined them in the kitchen. The boys were watching a movie with her mum in the other room, their laughter bouncing through the house.

"Hey, Coach," Bucyk said, that same tired, almost-shy smile on his face.

"Neil Bucyk," her father said, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Dad," Amy said, rolling her eyes and smiling down into her tea, her hands wrapped around the warmth of the mug. "We see him all the time."

"Sure, we see him, but when was the last time he came to dinner?"

"Oh, please," Amy said. "It's not like--"

"No, it's okay," Bucyk said. "He's right. Between two kids and Linda's dad leaving me the business, I don't have much time anymore. And what time I _do_ have is spent looking at curtains for the new house." He spat out the word _curtains_ like it was shit in his mouth, and then took a few long pulls from his beer to wash out the taste. Condensation dripped from the bottle and pooled on the table, and Amy realized she was staring. She turned away to look at her father, who winked and pushed himself away from the counter.

"That's what marriage is all about, son," he said, patting Bucyk on the back and sitting down at the table. "Curtains, kids, and curling."

"Your marriage, maybe," Bucyk muttered. "Mine's about country clubs and corpses." He shook his head. "But speaking of curling, I heard you guys found another stone."

"Yeah," she said. "That's seven."

"Wow," he said, letting out a low whistle. "It's been a really good summer for you guys. Think you'll find the last one before the lake freezes?"

Amy shook her head. "I doubt it. We've been really lucky, finding them so fast, but we've only got another week or two."

Bucyk rolled the bottle of beer between his palms, his eyes and voice both distant. "Can I see them?"

She and her father exchanged glances over the table, and he gave a slight nod. "Sure," Amy said, standing up. "They're downstairs."

*

Bucyk was sprawled on the basement floor, propped up on both elbows, his beer long-since empty and at least two ignored cell phone calls from his wife behind him. Not for the first time, Amy wondered what the hell was going on there, but it wasn't something she could come right out and ask, not with the two of them sober and alone in her basement.

"What's the deal with this, anyway?" he asked.

Amy, sitting against the door to the other room, squinted through the dim yellow light at the ceiling and wondered what the hell to say. "The rocks, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Everyone asks me that like it was my idea."

He turned his head and looked over his shoulder with a frown. "No, I know it was your dad's idea, but I thought you might know. He's up to something, right? He usually is."

Amy smiled. "Yeah, he usually is, but... shit, I don't know. He's old. His heart's failing. We go out, spend time together, find the stones, tell some stories. It's something to do."

"A purpose," he said, nodding, his voice wistful. "Sounds nice. What kind of stories?"

Amy shrugged, staring at the seven rocks lined up on the floor in front of the rest of the curling shrine. "I don't know. Just bullshit about the stones and where they came from, and there's something about a zamboni."

"A zamboni?"

"Yeah. Last summer, I thought I was trying to solve the mystery of the zamboni, like I was Nancy Drew, but now I don't think it matters."

"It doesn't," he said. "Truth's a feeling, not a fact."

Amy thought about that. "You hang out with too many corpses, Bucyk."

"Truer words," he said, one corner of his mouth lifting into a grin. "And if you're still wondering about the zamboni, the hockey guys rented it and there was some delivery fuck-up. It came a week early, and they didn't have anywhere to put it. We only had three sheets for a while, because of that fucking zamboni."

"I could probably ask 27 people in this town about the zamboni and get 38 stories," she said, laughing.

"Probably," he said, and he sounded more chipper than he had before, but his smile faded and he grabbed his empty beer bottle and started picking absently at the label. "It's like a museum down here. A time capsule to ten years ago. What the fuck happened?"

Amy thought about that, too, but wasn't sure what to say. There was a time -- and it wasn't that long ago -- that she would have snapped at him, said anything to steer him away from talking about the past. She didn't feel that same urgency, but she wasn't thrilled by the topic, either. She tried for the middle ground, asking, "What's up with you?"

Bucyk sighed, his body deflating and curling in on itself. "I don't know," he said. "The beer, maybe. I haven't been drinking much lately. But I thought it would be different. I thought _life_ would be different." And that was where she tried to stop him, because this was the kind of conversation best had with Lennox and a lot of mind-altering substances, the kind that would fade in the sun. Amy wasn't sure what the hell to do without that safety net in place, but when she tried to interrupt him, the words shriveled in her throat and Bucyk just kept talking. "But I don't even know what the fuck happened. Like, there's no moment I can point to, no decision I can look back on and say, 'there. Right there is where everything got fucked up.'"

She kept her eyes on the rocks they'd found, on the empty space where the final stone would go. "Really?"

"Really. I mean, can you? Do you know when it got fucked up?"

"Yeah," Amy said. "Yeah, I know exactly when it got fucked up. It just matters less than it used to."

 

**third.**  
The third summer was terrible. It was one of the hottest on record, temperatures up in the 30s, muggy and miserable. Amy and her father spent weekend after weekend on the water, sweating and sunburned and snapping at each other and not finding any rocks.

They checked out every rumor they got when they started, and then every rumor they'd accumulated in the meantime, and got nothing. They checked again, with the same results.

Amy was frustrated, smoking more than she had been, and the incessant questions from the nosy residents of Long Bay weren't helping. They all wanted to talk about it, ask her if she'd looked by the sandbar yet, tell her what she was doing wrong. The people she didn't know very well wanted to know why she'd given up; the people she was close to wanted to know why she hadn't.

"Well?"

Lennox sat on her front steps, ever-present joint in his mouth, and wiggled his eyebrows. He looked better than he did last time he'd been in town, but not by much. At least he'd cut his hair.

"Well what? Why don't I give up?"

He nodded, and Amy sprawled on her back on the porch, the wood scraping at the bare skin of her shoulders and arms as she stared at the peeling paint above her. "Dad's not giving up. He can't look alone."

"I think there's more to it than that, baby."

Amy made a frustrated sound, deep in her throat. "Yeah, okay, I'm on a journey, whatever. I'm spending time with my dying father. Why does everyone care so much?"

"You're picking at some shit scabbed over the whole town."

"Christ," Amy muttered, and tried to blow a few strands of hair out of her face. "Do you know where it is? The last rock?" She remembered him that morning, when they realized Cutter was gone, prowling the streets in boxers and unlaced tennis shoes, using his broom like a divining rod. She'd never asked him if he'd drawn any conclusions, or if anything about the rocks had come to him in one of his bizarre, drug-fueled flashes of insight.

"Nope," he said. "Want me to find out?"

Amy jolted upright. "What? How the fuck would you find out?"

He grinned. "I'd ask the guy who put 'em down there."

Her mouth opened and closed, but Amy was too shocked to say anything.

"Oh, come on, don't tell me you haven't figured it out. Who the hell else would throw curling rocks into Trout Lake? That move has Cutter's name written all over it, the moody bastard. And the timing was a big clue."

"But--"

"Why?" He tipped his head back, exhaled two perfect smoke rings. "That, you'll have to ask him yourself."

Amy lay back down slowly. "Speaking of picking at scabs," she muttered. "You two are in touch?"

Lennox took another deep drag off the joint, and shook his head as he held his breath. "Nah," he said. "But I could reach him if I had to." He paused, and she could feel him looking at her. "Do I have to?"

"Fuck him," she said, not even thinking about it. "We can get ourselves out of this."

"That's my girl. Why are we on this porch?"

It didn't take her long to decide. A night of not worrying about the fucking curling rocks was worth a lot. "I don't know," she said, standing up. "Let's go." She made him promise to get her home in one piece, and they picked up a few six-packs on the way to the mines.

 

**fourth.**  
Amy hauled her diving gear up out of the basement and spread it all over the living room, cleaning it and inspecting it to make sure it was still safe to use. Her father had fallen asleep in his favorite chair, but her mother was still awake, drinking tea and watching Amy from the couch.

"Tomorrow's the big day," her mother said, sounding excited.

Amy looked up from her examination of her respirator. "Yeah," she said, trying and failing to summon half the excitement her mother was showing.

"What's wrong, dear?"

"Nothing's wrong, really. I just don't know if I can take another summer like the last one." Even the thought of it made her want to crawl into bed, or, worse, the bottle.

"Oh, honey, that was just karma. You'll find the last rock, I just know it."

"Thanks, Mum," she said, but she really wasn't sure.

Her father shifted in his chair, drawing their attention; they both watched him sleeping for a few seconds, his frame seeming somehow small and shriveled even though his illness hadn't taken much of an outward toll.

"Besides," her mother said, "You have to."

"What do you mean, we have to?"

Her mother didn't look away from where her father was sprawled in his chair. "You know what I mean, Amy," and Amy had to leave the room before she burst into tears.

*

Her father fell in slow-motion. Amy stared at him for too long, remembered she was trained in CPR, knew it was useless even as she tried to pump his heart back to life. It was hot on the water, hot and loud and she was alone, choking on her tears, and she didn't know what to do. She couldn't figure out why the birds were making so much noise, and then she was back in town, riding in Long Bay's one fire truck, and she didn't remember how she got there. She must have called. She must have got the boat back to shore. She didn't know.

They took her home -- no use going to the hospital, they said -- and as they turned down her street, Amy noticed there were other cars on the road, other people in the street. Everything was different, the whole fucking world, and none of them cared. Unthinkably, they were living their lives, and Amy didn't understand what was happening. She knew her father was dead, and that Cutter would have to come home, and that she wasn't supposed to be thinking about that. She was supposed to be over it. They'd found the last stone -- it was still on the boat but it wasn't underwater -- and that was supposed to end it. It was buried, but as soon as she said the word "buried" in her head, she realized everything was wrong. They'd been dredging the bottom of the lake this whole time, digging things up, and she wasn't sure why she'd ever thought that would bury anything. She never stood a chance.

**FIN.**


End file.
